“We’re living at a time when attention is the new currency. Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value.” – Pete Cashmore, founder of mashable.com

Social media provides a conversational extension to a brand’s nurturing programmes, giving an opportunity to humanize communications and make brands more approachable. Social channels and mobile applications aren’t about websites anymore, but about experiences. And the number of people using the internet is on the rise. Since January 2018, for instance, a million first-time users get online every day. Below we’ve curated a few incredible statistics revolving around social media that prove its usefulness and relevance in today’s world.

1. Over the last year, we’ve seen a new social media user get online every 6.4 seconds.

As of May 2019, the total worldwide population is 7.7 billion, with the internet having 4.4 billion users, and 3.499 billion active social media users. Social media users grew by 202 million between April 2018 and April 2019. That works out at a new social media user every 6.4 seconds.

2. Facebook’s population is twice that of Africa’s total population.

Facebook undoubtedly has the largest number of social media users at 2.375 billion users. The platform’s relevance only makes it highly profitable for brands to invest in.

3. The most popular Facebook page is its own – with 208.1 million likes.

And the most liked non-Facebook owned page is Samsung Mobile USA at 156.2 million, followed by Cristiano Ronaldo’s at 122.4 million.

4. Instagram has 500 million daily active users, with 95 million photos getting uploaded each day.

The majority – 71% – of the 1 billion active monthly users on Instagram are millennials or younger. If your target audience is 35 years or younger, this platform is where you also want to be.

5. 93% of Pinterest users plan purchases on the platform.

When it comes to conversion, especially if your audience leans more towards female, Pinterest leads the way. Incredibly, it is said that 40% of purchases made on social media will eventually come from Pinterest, making it the second biggest driver of social media referral traffic.

6. On average, people have 7.6 social media accounts.

This means that on average, every internet user has over 7 different social media accounts across multiple social media platforms.

7. More people own a cell phone than a toothbrush or a toilet.

60% of Google’s searches come from mobile devices, 96% of Facebook users access the platforms through their mobile phones, 80% of Twitter users are on mobile and 93% of its videos are viewed on mobile, and 58% of unique LinkedIn visitors access it on their phones.

8. 56%  of all videos published last year were less than 2 minutes long.

Videos under 90 seconds had an average retention rate of 59% but videos longer than 30 minutes only retained 14%. Also, the most common types of videos were: explainers, product demos, how-tos, and testimonials.

9. One Google search is equal to turning on a 60W light bulb for 17 seconds.

To carry out its searches, Google’s data centre uses 0.01% of worldwide electricity. Google processes 100 billion searches each month, that averages at 40,000 search queries every second, that’s carried out by its 1.17 billion unique users.

10. Twitter has 391 million accounts with no followers at all.

The platform has a total of 1.3 billion accounts with 330 million active users monthly and 100 million daily active users.

11. One-third of the people on the internet use YouTube.

Over one billion people (which translates to one-third of the people on the internet) use YouTube. YouTubers watch 6 billion hours of videos every month and 4 billion videos every single day. YouTubers upload 300 hours of video every minute.

Did any of these statistics catch you by surprise? Do you have favourites? These are only one of the many surprising facts that depict that the future of social media, especially for brands and marketers, is the consumer’s attention.

So what are you waiting for? The possibilities are endless. You can kickstart your social media campaign with the Tribe of Brands team. We can help you explore various channel strategies and market penetration tactics.